Motorhome self build project. Built and designed by one person over the course of about 36 months. The base is a 1994 Carpenter school bus. The end result will be a low energy consumption motorhome.

Thursday, April 28, 2016

I must be the biggest sucker

No photo again but today's work didn't merit it. Two things were achieved but only two.

Those that can cast themselves back a couple of blog entries will recall that I ran out of rivets putting the steel plates over the sites of the old schoolbus flashers. Well, today despite feeling quite yucky from working, I replaced the four screws used temporarily with rivets then sprayed over with grey paint. Not very exciting but worthwhile.

My other accomplishment or rather the reason I consider myself to be the world's biggest sucker stems from an experiment I carried out today. Those with very long memories will recall I bought a pair of electromagnets from China some months ago. It has already been established that no matter what polarity current was supplied to it (which would normally alter electromagnetic polarity), the electromagnet never would change polarity. In fact, it seemed to be both polarities simultaneously. Two identical electromagnets would not repel each other. They would just attract. Similarly no matter which polarity of permanent magnet was introduced to the electromagnet, the electromagnet could never be persuaded to repel the permanent magnet. Pretty strange and rather useless.

Today I tried the electromagnet for its attractive purposes. Fail again! It would attract but as a 9v magnet, it would attract from around 1/8 inch but very feebly. It would grip something strongly but was utterly useless in all other respects.

My goal is to engineer a way of opening the bus front door. What I'm trying to do is to lift the locking latch on the front door opening mechanism. Carpenter did employ an electric door opener but my bus has only a manual opener. Had I had the electric version, I could have simply tapped into the circuit with a remote opener. Looking around those would set me back $500. That's just too costly!

Clearly I was a fool to believe any Chinese electronic gizmo would actually work. I do buy bits from China but that was my first electronic gizmo. Oh well, lesson learned. Don't buy any electronics from China.

Looking around, there are some linear actuators on sale. That would make the door an electric only affair. That would make exit in an emergency somewhat interesting so I'd have to put some way of bypassing the electrical system. Sounds interesting though!